Tourism Action Plan released

Last week, Tourism Yorkton released a comprehensive Community Action Plan the organization hopes will "increase tourism revenues and visitation through managing and marketing the city as a tourism destination."

Randy Goulden, executive director of Tourism Yorkton, said the key to the plan's success is collaboration.

"The number one thing out of this plan is this is not a Tourism Yorkton plan," she said. "It's a plan that we need to be working with our members and the community as a whole."

Pat Fiacco, CEO of Tourism Saskatchewan was also talking collaboration last week as the guest speaker for the Yorkton Chamber of Commerce Luncheon June 14.

"There's the creation of new destination marketing areas where the operators are in control of the activity, the promotion of their regions and that's really starting to pay some dividends," he said pointing to the Cypress Hills Destination Area as an example.

A few years ago, the hospitality facilities, parks, municipal governments, event organizers, experience-based businesses and other stakeholders in the region got together to put southwest Saskatchewan on the map.

The campaign is backed up by advertising, social media and a slick website that features vacation packages, activities, events, planning tools and more, basically a one-stop online presence that makes it very easy to put together a Cypress Hills vacation.

The Yorkton Action Plan takes a similar approach identifying 10 specific action steps to establishing the region as a destination area. These are: coordinating annual events and facilities to improve promotional efficiency; expanding local partnerships between municipalities, First Nations and tourism operators; growing the organization's membership base; improving customer service by providing training opportunities; develop new experiences to take advantage of this rapidly developing trend in tourism; improving and expanding visitor services at the Yorkton Information Centre; develop a destination area marketing campaign and design new vacation packages for visitors; develop a technology plan to improve online promotional opportunities; implement a data collection regime to inform future marketing strategies; and establish a destination marketing fund.

Fiacco told Chamber members Saskatchewan Tourism would support local efforts by its mandate to make the province as a whole a destination area. He said since he became CEO of Tourism Saskatchewan one of the things that has most surprised him is how little people, even residents of the province, know about what they've got in our own backyard. Goulden also identified local awareness of attractions, events and activities in this area as a key weakness Tourism Yorkton will attempt to address with its new Action Plan.

Fiacco praised the local organization for both its past achievements and its new direction.

On the provincial side, he told attendees of the luncheon to be on the lookout for a high-profile, "amazing" television ad campaign to coincide with the Grey Cup in the fall.

He said the plan is to take a similar route as the Newfoundland and Labrador "Find Yourself" campaign created in part by Mary Taylor-Ash when she was assistant deputy minister for tourism. Taylor-Ash just joined Tourism Saskatchewan as executive director in marketing and communications.

Goulden said Tourism Yorkton is cautiously optimistic about the change from regional-based tourism structure to the provincial one.

"We did participate in some of the regional initiatives, but now we're buying into a provincial brand more so and Saskatchewan is just as diverse as Yorkton, we have all the diverse activities, so we'll keep watching, it's only been a short year since the change."